Letters from Home
by BAnder54
Summary: Sometimes two worlds do collide, as Scott Lancer finds out.


**Letters from Home**

_He'd been forbidden to play in the grand study with the big mahogany desk. Grandfather had told him there were things in there not meant for little boys. But sometimes, when no one was looking, he liked to do forbidden things. And that's where he found the packet of letters, at the bottom of the drawer, tied with a plain string, addressed in a bold scrawl not to Grandfather but to him, Scott Lancer. There were fifteen in all, almost two for each year he'd been alive. _

_They were from him. His real father._

_It was dark where he crouched, quiet as a larder mouse, but the rain drops found him anyway and made his coat and hair damp. From behind the wooden barrels he listened. Made a picture in his mind from the sounds he heard. Men—a lot of them—with rough, loud voices full of the sea, their shoes squeaking on wet boards. Sailors, he guessed. In the distance, ship's horns and grey gulls cawed through the low hanging dark clouds. He'd been waiting a long time to sneak aboard. The ship was headed west, all the way to California, he'd made sure of that by asking a porter. _

_He listened for the bloated whistle, signaling anchors up. He wondered in a vague, unconcerned way where Grandfather was and what he was doing this evening at home. _

_A real mouse poked its head out of a hole in the barrel slat, grain crumbs covering its fine whiskers. Scott grinned and Grandfather, the old house on Travail Street with the picture of the fine lady—Grandfather said she was his mother—the soft rain and the fifteen letters left his mind. He held out his finger, tried to touch its mousy nose. Then laughed at the way it skittered and slid up to the barrel rim._

_A lurch and the huge boat groaned from deep within its belly. The horn bellowed once, and he found himself holding his breath, palms flat beside him. The boat reminded him of a giant whale, like Moby Dick in the story Grandfather read to him at night. Thinking of it made him a little sad, would his real father know about books and such? Would he be like Grandfather?_

"_Aha!" A voice said by his ear. "Found you!" The barrel was heaved aside and Scott looked up. It was the porter. Angry bubbles of saliva burst in the corners of his mouth. He stepped forward, then stopped, a cruel tic trembling his lips. "You. Get up."_

_Not waiting for an answer, the man gripped Scott hard above the elbow, hauling him to his feet. His right leg had gone to sleep and buckled with pins and needles. He was pulled up higher so his toes barely touched the ground. _

"_Thinking about stowing away, eh?"_

_Scott was silent. He'd never seen a man like this before. It angered the porter and he was shaken by the arm until his head rang. Rain drops flew from his coat and hair. _

"_Them's that ride, have to pay." Another shake and Scott's teeth rattled together. _

_"Unhand the boy!" _

_There was a scuffle and the strong hand around his arm was wrenched away. __It gave Scott pause to see his grandfather. The blue eyes that always looked like they had glints of steel in them were hooded. There was anger there, yes, but there was something else, too. Sometime later, it occurred to him that Grandfather didn't even have his coat on. _

_But that feeling, of one thing moving fast and the other very, very slow combined with the pain in his arm, was enough to make Scott want to throw up._

_He met Grandfather's eyes, saw the relief there. He didn't need to see anything else. _

Scott pushed the memory away like an empty supper plate. An odd out-of-place chuckle burbled up: Murdoch and his grandfather were nothing alike. Riding on that bit of thought, the ache in his head made him gasp out loud.

Five feet. Five long feet. Somehow, his pistol had bounced out of his holster. It was bogged down in sucking mud. Even if he could reach it, it was no good.

With one eye open, he could see the horse lying on its side. A sassy paint unaccustomed to lightning, or much else for that matter. His other eye wasn't working, it felt full and heavy in the socket.

It was too warm, despite the leftover wind from the storm. Hot. His leg was much like his left eye, sluggish. Pain was somewhere swimming above him, present but prickling outside his immediate concern. Which was the river. Swollen with rainwater and lapping at his right boot. The one he couldn't—didn't—want to move.

The wind picked up, pushing the stars across the sky, bumping them into the big moon. Should it be this hot after all that rain? Black on white, shadows pulled at the corners of rocks and trees. The smell of wet and decay. Hot.

A squelch of grass and twigs, then a boot that belonged to someone was just out of his range of vision. He probably should look up, but that would involve moving his left eye, maybe the leg, too. It wore him out just thinking about it. He couldn't move, and he couldn't breathe. All that was holding him together was a sense of home and the idea of pain.

Drops of water from the wrecked tree branch above him landed on the part of his face turned to the sky, like cold kisses. Nice. The rasping of a harsh voice breathed over him.

He sensed pain coming. Grandfather headed towards him, without a coat and his tie askew. Wasn't quite here yet, but he looked steadily at Scott, eyes rounded and white with worry.

Yes. Here he was.

~o~O~o~

Well, Murdoch thought. That's a first.

His son had willingly taken pain medication. Scott was so doped he was seeing sailing ships. At least he'd asked about them the last time he'd said anything. Murdoch laid his pencil on the small table and rested the ledger he'd been making a mess of for the last hour face down on his bent knee.

The room had twenty-seven planks in the ceiling, forty-two tiles on the floor, and exactly three pictures. Two were of the boat variety. Murdoch had answered all the questions Scott had when his son was awake, including one about childhood letters, and had counted ceiling planks and floor tiles when he was not.

Scott's roughened hand came up for a moment, then fell to the cotton blanket. Murdoch leaned forward, set a warm hand on his son's forearm, testing to see how awake he was. Immediately, Scott turned his head, met Murdoch's stare with one good eye, one filled with blood. The bruises to that side of his face were spectacular.

"How are the sailing ships?" Murdoch asked.

"What?" Quietly, like he didn't want to be heard. He licked his cracked lips, took a few shallow breaths. "What happened to the mare?"

Murdoch nodded to steady himself, had some idea how badly Scott might take it. "The lightning was almost a direct hit." Not really answering.

Scott swore softly. A strange noise came from him, a queasy almost-whimper as he moved the wrong way, and came face to face with the fact he had a broken leg. He looked away. "She would have made a good cattle horse."

"No matter," Murdoch said, after a minute of staring at the back of Scott's head. "I'm just glad I found you. It wasn't easy with the storm."

Scott looked back, startled. "You?" But there was something else, his eyes weren't right. "You sent letters."

"I can write you know." With a soft laugh and deflection, because Scott needed it.

Needed it, but wouldn't take it. "Fifteen of them."

Murdoch was quiet, didn't ask how Scott felt or if he needed anything—he'd just been swatted away. By memories. Besides, his son was drifting in and out of coherent thought.

"Grandfather," he thought he heard Scott whisper. His eyes were shut, the medication taking full effect.

"Son?" Murdoch asked, bending over him, smelling the faint whiff of river and blood. His nose wrinkled. Scott's eyes remained closed, but he was frowning.

"You both came."

And that, apparently, was that. After a few minutes of watching Scott sleep, which Murdoch had done for far too many hours since the boy had arrived to the ranch, he flipped the ledger over and picked up his pencil. But he wasn't seeing the scratchy figures aligned just so in each column. He was downstairs at the big desk—his hair impossibly dark, the backs of his hands so smooth—on an early April morning that had sunlight streaming in through the window. He was hunched over a letter, addressing it Care of Boston.

The End

9/2/2014

A/N: Harlan Garrett makes a wonderful foil and provides excellent fodder for many Lancer fics. While I'm not exactly the president of the Harlan Garrett Appreciation Society, I also don't think he was a moustache-twirling villain that most of Lancerdom makes him out to be. If a character could be representative of the time, Harlan is it. Never PC, or even polite, he plays by his own rules. That being said, he raised Scott and somewhere down the line that boy learned how to be a conscientious adult. There had to be some good in the man for that to happen. :-).


End file.
